


this our winter of love (a gift from one above)

by teamfreehoodies



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Hand-wavey Magic, M/M, Multi, Surprise Marsupial (It's a Possum), Temporary Character Death, modern!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:22:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28314495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teamfreehoodies/pseuds/teamfreehoodies
Summary: “It’s weird but I don’t think it’s witcher-weird.”“Oh, it’s witcher-weird, alright.” Lambert interrupted, pulling up something on his phone. It was one of those ‘smart’ phones, paper thin, supposedly able to think for itself; seemed like more trouble than Geralt cared to deal with, but Lambert was half in love with the damned thing. “Look,” he said, thrusting the lit-up rectangle in Geralt’s face.Geralt had to pull comically far back to actually look at what Lambert wanted him to see. The screen showed a small parcel of people milling about a city center. They were all dressed like either they had walked off of a movie set, or they were genuinely from the 1200s. There was even a bard, holding a lute. A distressingly familiar bard, for all that Geralt hadn't seen that face in eight hundred years.
Relationships: Eskel/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Eskel/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Eskel/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 20
Kudos: 238
Collections: Bards of Geraskier Secret Santa 2020





	this our winter of love (a gift from one above)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LiathLining (ActuallyAMenace)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ActuallyAMenace/gifts).



> This was my secret santa gift for [Menace!](https://actually-a-menace.tumblr.com/) I hope you enjoy it!

As it turns out, there _were_ endregas in the sewers of New Novigrad, though Geralt had really honestly thought it was more likely to just be large rats. This was his least favorite part of being a Witcher in the new age; where before an endrega hunt might be in a forest or a prairie, or at worst a dank cave, now he was almost guaranteed to have to fight them in the close quarters of cities, caught between steel and glass skyscrapers and crumbling brownstones, and of course if he broke anything there were always local law enforcement officers trying to track him down. Truly, the worst part of this new modern world wasn’t even the loss of his most stable source of income that had forced him into his semi-retirement; no it was the lack of forests to just exist in, the dearth of clear grass, and also the highly annoying and truly _disastrous_ loss of horses as the main source of transportation. Now he had to have a motor vehicle, which was confining at best, loud and noxious at worst. 

He missed Roach.

His cellphone vibrated against his hip, but he ignored it, stalking his prey through the sewer sludge below the streets of New Novigrad. In some ways this new world was a lot cleaner than the one he’d first been born into, but in many ways it was exactly the same, if not dirtier. He gently sidestepped a passing bit of unidentifiable flotsam, pushing forward through the stench and grime in chase of the bastard endrega that was the whole reason he was out here, trawling through sewer water at half past three in the morning on a Tuesday. He had work in the morning for _fuck’s sake._

His phone vibrated again, probably fucking Lambert. Lambert was the only one of them who double-texted and he had no fucking patience either, not even after all these years. Geralt wasn’t going to check his phone in the middle of a hunt, no matter how many text messages the little shit sent, so he’d just have to wait until this damn monster stopped playing hide and seek with Geralt. 

The pipes came to a juncture, splitting off into four different directions as the smaller off-shooting pipes came together for more efficient disposal. It meant the tunnel to the left was significantly larger, but knowing Geralt’s luck, the endrega hadn’t scurried off in that direction. Another close-quarters fight for his troubles, fucking delightful. 

He paused, listening closely to try and hear any hint of movement, any sort of chitinous scratching that might indicate which direction the monster had gone. His phone buzzed again, and he had to physically restrain himself from launching it down the sewer drain: they were expensive, even though he only had the flip phone kind, and replacing them was more of a hassle than was worth whatever fleeting enjoyment he would get out of tossing the cursed thing. 

_Whatever had happened to a good old Xenovox_ , he wondered drily, taking off down the pipe to his left, chasing after the slight shifting of chitin armor over stone and metal. 

The fight was more of a shitshow (quite literally) than he had intended, and by the time he had the damn endrega’s stinger as proof of death and was back up topside he was covered head to toe in utter filth and more than ready to tell Lambert to _fuck off_ entirely next time he tried to send him on a contract. He could toss the next one at his group of yuppies and cats; Geralt was done. He was retired, dammit. He shouldn’t be spending his evenings rubbing grime off of centuries old armor, or trying to get the absorbed scents of New Novigrads shit-filled sewers out of his swords metal. 

He finished packing the stinger into the back compartment of his motorcycle, and then, reluctantly, fished out his phone from the clip on his belt. 

He had two unopened texts from Lambert: _gotta cntrct 400_ followed by _y/n its wrd_. Geralt, unwilling to try and decode whatever new acronyms Lambert felt passed for communication these days, texted back _words_ then clipped the phone back in and started up his bike, anxious to get home and shower.

The streets were quiet at this time of night, which served Geralt’s purposes well, and his apartment building was well-into quiet hours by the time he arrived home. That was extremely fortunate, because Madame Brighton in the apartment across from Geralt’s was a bit of a busybody, and kept sticking her nose into Geralt’s business. He didn’t feel like politely fending off her questions, or offers to come round for tea whilst he was covered head to toe in the city’s filth.

He fully intended to ignore Lambert’s text until the morning, but the stupid phone buzzed again just as he got out of the shower. _Contract for you. 400 gold yes or no it’s a weird one. figured you might want it._ His phone pinged again while he was contemplating that: _get w/the times grandpa._

Geralt snorted, reluctantly amused by Lambert’s needling. Four hundred gold was certainly tempting. That was half his rent in one job. Although Lambert's definition of weird did tend to run towards the truly bizarre so... _ah shit_ , he was already sending back a simple affirmative. He’d go out to the farm Esekl ran as their sort of homebase tomorrow, see what all that was about. But for now, he had an appointment with his bed.

* * *

Eskel’s farm was just a little ways from the mouth of the Yrden, virgin ground that had been unfit for growing for centuries but gifted via Law of Surprise back when that was still the rule of the land. It had sat fallow for a long, long time, but when the cities started growing upwards, Eskel, tired of the increasing stares and discouraged by the lack of contracts, had turned it into a goat farm. It sat at almost two hundred acres now, and between Eskel, Lambert, and Geralt they’d collected a whole host of misfits and outcasts to staff the place. Mostly the remaining witchers, a surprising number of Cats and Vipers, who had survived the pogroms and still went off on contracts, but some of them were content to just work the farm and live out the retirement so many of them had been certain would never be theirs. 

Geralt had tried. He was _semi_ -retired, honestly more than anything. He just kept getting entangled in ridiculous plots and schemes by powers that wanted to take over the world for some reason. It was almost comical (and certainly, Eskel and Lambert thought it was) but it really just meant that every hundred years or so, some up-start dictator wannabe got too big for their britches and Geralt, for whatever reason, (unrelated to songs nearly a millennia old from a bard that had loved him once, _thank you, Yennefer_ ) they all seemed certain they had to try themselves against Geralt first to prove their efficacy. 

It didn’t... go well for them. Mainly. Emhyrs had been tough. The Winter of 1518 had been... uncomfortable. The less said about the 1900s as a whole, the better. But so far this century was... fine. No wars on, no plagues, nothing much in need of a witcher and certainly nothing in need of Geralt specifically. Ciri visited sometimes. But mostly Geralt worked at the national park, keeping the peace between the leshens and the dryads and the many visitors wanting to hike up the mountains. It was fine. Peaceful. At least no one tried to kill him there. 

It did mean he didn’t get out to Eskel’s farm as often as he liked, but one of the nicer parts of life in this new world was that temporary portals could be bought, albeit for more coins than was practical. Thankfully, Geralt could activate a one-off portal and be there in minutes. It was for dire emergencies only: portals tended to make him sick and he hated them, but needs must, after all. The mage who sold him this one had apparently been better than he was hoping: he’d had a mage once drop him in the composting piles, but this one let him out in the front yard, mere steps from the big wooden porch that wrapped fully around the massive farmhouse Eskel was always working on. 

Lambert was waiting on the porch, holding two mugs of coffee it looked like too, thank Melitele. 

“Took your sweet time getting here,” he said, letting Geralt take the mug from his hands, “I was about to let Aiden take this one.” 

Geralt rolled his eyes into his coffee, ignoring Lambert in favor of inhaling the delicious brew. This was one invention of this new world he was entirely grateful for. 

He leaned over the porch railing next to Lambert, looking out over the farm. The house itself was perched on a hill raised just above the rest of the fields: from here it was possible to see almost the entire farm, save for into the horse barn or the goat house. There were plenty of goats milling about in their yard this morning, and a small figure was running a horse, another trotting back and forth from the well-pump to the cow’s pens. It was busy here in a way the keeps had been before the sacking, a way that felt like something awfully close to home. Like contentment maybe. 

“Earth to Geralt?” Lambert waved a hand in front of his face and Geralt idly batted it away, raising an eyebrow at his brother as he turned to face him. “Did you hear any of what I just said to you?” 

“No.” Geralt said flatly. Lambert, used to Geralt being Geralt, didn’t even roll his eyes before he repeated what he’d been saying.

“Gotta contract last night from up north: reports of a town with a sudden influx of 'confused village people'.”

“Village people?” Geralt repeated, wondering if that meant the new village people that Ciri had introduced him to, or if this was some other strange euphemism he was too old to keep up with.

“Yeah, I had the same reaction, but it’s not our friendly gays apparently.” Lambert knocked his fist against the wooden porch railing, “Turns out it’s actual folks from a village that’s meant to be abandoned. As the tale goes every once in a while they just appear. Full grown men and women from the old days, acting like nothing’s weird or strange about appearing in the middle of a town that’s got no space for ‘em.” 

“It’s weird but I don’t think it’s witcher-weird.” Seemed more like mage weird to Geralt, but he didn’t really involve himself in the world of magic users anymore, content to just take his contracts, earn his coin, and try to forget how godsdamned expensive it was in this world to own and take care of a horse. Back when he was first on the Path, it was possible to both afford a horse and live a somewhat decent life as a witcher earning coin for slaying monsters. Now the second job as a Park Ranger was technically more like his first job, just because of how fucking expensive it was to live close enough to his daughter that he could see her without needing to portal every-fucking-where. 

If it weren’t for Ciri he’d probably just live here on the farm, but she’d moved to Novigrad after school and... Well, that was that for Geralt. 

“Oh, it’s witcher-weird, alright.” Lambert interrupted, pulling up something on his phone. It was one of those ‘smart’ phones, paper thin, supposedly able to think for itself; seemed like more trouble than Geralt cared to deal with, but Lambert was half in love with the damned thing. “Look,” he said, thrusting the lit-up rectangle in Geralt’s face. 

Geralt had to pull comically far back to actually look at what Lambert wanted him to see. The screen showed a small parcel of people milling about a city center. They were all dressed like either they had walked off of a movie set, or they were genuinely from the 1200s. There was even a bard, holding a lute. A distressingly familiar bard, for all that Geralt hadn't seen that face in eight hundred years. 

He pulled the phone from Lambert’s grip, squinting to try and get a closer look. It couldn’t be Jaskier. 

Jaskier had surely died eight hundred years ago. He wasn’t immortal like the rest of them had been, wasn’t anything but an actual human bard, had died sometime in the winter while Geralt and the rest were at Kaer Morhen and they’d come back to only a grave and word that while notice had been sent, it hadn’t reached them in time. 

“What the fuck is this.” Geralt growled, angry now, remembering. 

“That’s why it’s witcher-weird.” Lambert answered, taking back his phone so he could swipe to another picture. “Look,” and he handed it back to Geralt.

This time the picture was of a shrine of sorts, though it was hard to tell for the graininess of the texture. The photo had clearly been taken a great distance from the rough-hewn circle of stones and gray mounds, but there was no mistaking the centerpiece for anything other than what it was. 

“Is that—” Geralt asked, because _fuck_.

“It is.” Lambert said and then took his phone back, though the image of a towering figure in white, nearly washed out by the strength of the magic aura around her, was not one Geralt could just forget.

“So it could be—” Geralt asked, almost not daring to hope. Just because a goddess was there didn’t have to mean that it was possible. It could very well be just a fluke. After all, how many individual faces could there really be? It might just be a look-alike.

“Wouldn’t get your hopes up if I was you,” Lambert said quietly, blunt as he ever was. 

He was right though. It wouldn’t do to get attached to the idea of something impossible. 

“Where is this?” He asked, because there was no time like the present to take care of something this important. He’d have to call off work, but it wasn’t like they didn’t know he was a witcher. 

“It’s north. These were taken from Talgar.” Well that would be quite the journey without a portal. 

“Do we have a mage staying around right now?” 

“Don’t need one,” Lambert said, tossing the tiny portal device at him. “Got it set up for you already.”

“You were ready.” Geralt said, palming the small device and handing his now-empty coffee mug back to Lambert. 

“Yeah, well,” Lambert huffed, taking the mug and leaning back to sit against the railing, “I know what it’s like to run a fool’s errand for somebody lost. Figured I knew what you would do.” 

Right. Aiden. Geralt nodded gratefully at Lambert, ignoring the buzzing under his skin. He needed to get ready. 

He had his swords already, so it was really just a matter of tracking down Eskel. They’d drifted apart and back together again over the years, since Jaskier had... well. They’d not been the same since, constantly aware of the empty spaces he used to fill. It had been hard to keep going the way they always did— been impossible, really. They still loved each other, and Geralt knew this would be just as hard for Eskel as it might be for him. 

Maybe he’d even come out of retirement to help him. If it meant getting Jaskier back? They’d both do anything.

* * *

He found Eskel in the kitchen. Unsurprising. 

“Hey, did Lambert tell you?” No one had ever accused him of tact. 

Eskel startled slightly, and Geralt winced, but dropped out of the shadows to actually stand in the kitchen proper. “You really need to wear louder shoes, Geralt. The new armor doesn’t creak as much as the old one.” 

Switching from leather to Kevlar would do that, he supposed. At least Eskel seemed to be happy to see him. 

“It’s not the shoe’s fault, you’re just out of practice.” 

Eskel laughed, wiping his hands off on a rag. “Yeah, yeah,” he said, coming around the counter to grab Geralt in a quick hug, “When are you finally going to admit you’re too old for this, huh?” 

“When you admit you’re losing your edge, Wolf.” 

“No thank you, I’ve got the goats and enough hooligans running around to keep me sharp.”

“Think you’ve got one last one in you?” Geralt asked, finally releasing Eskel. It had been too long since they’d last seen each other.

“What are you up to this time?” Eskel asked, retreating back to the sink so he could finish the dishes he’d been cleaning. No matter how many times Lambert tried to sell them on the wonders of this new technology they stuck to what they knew. 

“Lambert found a weird case up in Talgar.” Geralt answered, folding his arms across his chest. “He didn’t tell you?” 

Eskel’s grip tightened on the plate he was holding: the slight squeak of the ceramic as it groaned against the pressure of Eskel’s grip was gunshot loud in the tiny kitchen. 

“He told me.” Eskel said, carefully neutral. 

“Then you know what I’m asking.” 

“I know.” Eskel held his silence for another long moment, and Geralt, patient, held his breath in time. He could do this without Eskel. He could, but it would be miserable and harder and take longer, and if it really was Jaskier... well, if it really was Jaskier back from where he’d been lost to them, then Eskel would want to be there. 

If it wasn’t Jaskier? Geralt might need Eskel himself. 

“He would go if it were one of us.” Geralt said, because it was true. Because Jaskier was brave where he should have been cowardly, and cowardly when he should have been brave, but he loved with his whole heart and for whatever reason he’d decided they were worth it. He’d made them think they could be worth it. 

The plate shattered under Eskel’s grip, and he dropped the shards into the sink, brushing off his hands. “Fuck.” he said looking at the mess in the sink. “That was low.” 

Maybe it was. But it had been eight hundred lonely years without their lover, and if there was even a sliver of a chance they could have him back, Geralt would move the earth itself to see it through. Eskel would too, he just needed a push to remember it. 

“Give me ten minutes.” Eskel muttered, turning away from the sink. Geralt released a breath he’d only been half-conscious of holding, and he leaned into the hand Eskel dropped on his shoulder as he brushed past him. He hadn’t wanted to do this alone. 

Now, he wouldn’t have to.

* * *

The portal spat them out in the village center from the photo, though it was empty of anyone except for a lone busker, strumming her guitar and crooning slowly to herself. She gasped in surprise when they landed, and then started strumming a much faster song. Shit, it was one of Jaskier’s old songs, the first one he wrote for them as a unit. Of all the things that were lost to time, Geralt had rather hoped that might be one of them, but Jaskier was damned good at his job, and unfortunately that meant his songs were as well-known as that fussy playwright from the 1800s that Eskel had spent several years with.

Geralt ignored her, though Eskel sent a strained smile her way. It wasn’t often they got recognized as The Witchers from those songs, mostly because for all that everyone knows they’re functionally immortal, the humans tend to not really believe it, so they were far more likely to just be thought of as their guild first. 

There's a coffee shop on the corner which at this time of day was probably their best bet for getting information. The shrine must be around here somewhere although, honestly, Geralt was more interested in finding Jaskier than the reason he was here. A nervous anticipation thrummed in Geralt’s gut, and he was pathetically grateful for Eskel beside him. He didn’t think he could do this without him there.

A little bell jingled overhead when they entered, and the competing scents of coffee and baked pastries and a lot of humans wearing perfumes and deodorants washed over him at once. It was a pleasanter scent than walking into a tavern used to be, but still slightly overwhelming, so it took a second before Geralt recognized the sweet chamomile scent threaded through the noise was a familiar one. 

Jaskier had been here. 

Eskel stiffened next to him, obviously recognizing the same scent. There was a barista behind the counter, cleaning an intimidatingly boxy machine with her back turned to them. Geralt rapped one hand on the counter to get her attention. 

“Good morning,” Eskel interrupted him and Geralt snapped his mouth shut with a slight grimace. Right, patience. 

“Morning!” she chirped happily, turning around and tossing the rag she’d been holding underneath the counter as she approached them. “What can I do ya’ for?” 

“We’re actually here for information.” Geralt said, because he could smell Jaskier, which meant he’d been here recently, and that took precedence right now. 

“What my companion means,” Eskel laughed, leaning forward so he was closer to the barista than Geralt was, “is that we’ll take a black coffee and your sweetest frappuccino. This one gets grumpy when his sugars are low.” Eskel clapped him on the shoulder and the barista smiled sunnily at them again, tapping at her little console. 

“No problem!” she chirped, laughing too, “my mom’s diabetic, I _totally_ feel you.” 

“Thank you,” Eskel smiled warmly, his scars crinkling and Geralt felt it was too long since he’d last seen that smile. Small as it was. 

“I’ll be outside,” he grunted, feeling strangely wounded by the interaction, and ignored Eskel’s questioning look as he ducked back onto the street. 

The scents of the cafe cut off when the door closed behind him, and he pulled up the images Lambert had texted him. His nerves felt frayed by the sudden hope being dangled in front of him and then yanked away. 

The first picture must have been taken from the corner where the busker was set up; Geralt could see the bottom edge of the cafe’s logo just barely cut off over Jaskier’s shoulder in the top left. Maybe she’d know something.

Luckily she was still standing there, and if the stars in her eyes as he approached were any indication, she was something of a fan. 

“Can I ask you a question?” he started, forgoing a greeting in favor of time. She nodded somewhat frantically, sliding her guitar over her head and setting it aside. He pulled the image of Jaskier up on his phone, zooming in so Jaskier’s face was most of the screen. “Have you seen this man?”

She squinted at the phone in his grip then smiled in sudden recognition, “Oh yeah!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands, “He was part of the occurrence.” 

“The occurrence?” he prodded, feeling suddenly as if he was onto something.

“It was foretold by the prophet Milena, that visitors from a time past would return as if from the dead.” 

“Right.” He said flatly, wondering if maybe she wasn’t a believer herself. “And where’s this.” He asked, showing her the picture of the shrine. 

“That’s Her drey. She brought them back from playing so they could be safe here.” There was something slightly glassy-eyed about this woman’s behavior, but she had the answers he needed, as confounding as they were.

“Could you take me there?” 

“Oh no,” she said, snapping out of whatever doe-eyed rapture she’d just been slinking into. “The drey is sacred, only true-believers and those saved can be there.” 

“I need to find my friend.” Geralt said, but she was already turning away from him, sliding her guitar back over her head. 

“He’s been saved,” she replied, shaking her head sadly at him. “The Saved stay and no one comes for them.”

Geralt got the sudden sense that anything that came out of her mouth after this would just be more nonsense, so he let her go, turning back to the little cafe. Eskel came out just as he crossed the square, holding two cups of coffee in his hands. 

“Got anything?” Geralt asked, absently taking the cup Eskel shoved into his chest.

“Yeah apparently a whole crowd of people just appeared, all dressed like Renn Faire extras, then a woman in all white sang a song and they followed her out of town.” Eskel raised his eyebrows over his cup of coffee, and Geralt took an absent sip of the sugary concoction Eskel had gotten him. It was surprisingly tasty. 

“Yeah, that tracks with what I got out of the busker.” 

“Mmm,” Eskel hummed, “So we’ve got some kind of what, sorceress? Siren maybe?” 

“Whatever it is, I’m pretty sure it’s got those people at the shrine in that picture Lambert gave us. Busker called it a ‘drey,’” Geralt replied. 

“Like a possum nest?” 

“Yeah, like a possum nest.” 

They both sat with that knowledge for a moment, before Eskel rocked up on his toes, breaking the temporary solemnity. “Well, barista says the shrine is about half-a-day’s hike into the forest on the edge of town.” 

“No time like the present.” 

* * *

The hike through the forest was shorter than the barista claimed, though that might have more to do with the fact that they were witchers, and excited witchers at that, then anything about the barista’s ability to estimate distances. 

The ‘drey’ turned out to be a circle of alternating statues and gravestones. Geralt’s medallion shook on his chest the closer he got, until it abruptly stopped moving as he stepped through the outer ring. 

It was eerily silent as they investigated. At the northernmost point of the circle stood the largest statue. It was nearly as tall as Geralt, a possum stood up on its hind legs, one paw clasped to its bosom, the other reaching out as if in invitation, or exaltation maybe. The face was kind, the eyes two polished stones of midnight obsidian. 

“Ever seen anything like this?” Eskel asked, coming to stand at Geralt’s shoulder.  
  
“What,” Geralt turned to face him, instead of the strangely compelling possum. “A witcher sized statue of a common rodent that’s tied to a potential siren, mage, or goddess, and hundreds of people coming back to life from literal centuries ago?” He paused, smiling at Eskel’s gimlet stare. “Can’t say I have.” 

“You’re a menace.” Eskel said, though he said it fondly. “Any idea what to do from here?” 

As if the universe were watching and waiting for the most appropriately dramatic moment, (Geralt had been alive for far too long to not suspect that sometimes this was true,) a sudden flash of ozone and lightning washed over the clearing, raising all the hair on Geralt’s body. He and Eskel had their swords out and held in defensive potions before the figure standing in the center of the clearing was even fully solidified (and wasn’t that alarming in its own way.) 

She was definitely powerful, whatever she was. Dressed head to toe in greys so pale they were almost white, she radiated power and chaos in a way that set Geralt’s teeth on edge. 

“Have you come to claim my own?” she intoned languorously. The world seemed to be... blurring at the edges, softening maybe, as Geralt’s focus narrowed down to only what existed inside the drey. “I offer only to those of purest heart, so speak plainly witchers, and speak true.” 

Eskel bumped Geralt’s shoulder with his own, and he tried to pull his thoughts back together. It was... surprisingly difficult. Everything felt slow now, like spaces were bubbling up from the _in between_ places, inserting themselves between the seams of reality itself. He felt like he should be panicked by that, but it was done so calmly and so slowly there was no need to panic, not really. 

“We’re here for a bard, we lost him, ages ago. We thought he was dead.” The old grief rose up, plucked from his chest for the woman’s desire to examine it. His chest cracked under the weight of it, and he spun out, floating along the new softened spaces of the drey—Eskel caught him, held him up, just like he had back then, back when he was first trying to live under the burden of having lost Jaskier, when the guilt of not being there had threatened to drown him. 

“You come for the bard Jaskier.” She intoned, still with that dream-like detachment. “I am Didelphis, the goddess of the overlooked and the hunted, savior of all in need. I saved your bard and brought him here, to my home. You would take him?” Her inflection didn’t change at all, soft and steady throughout. 

“Yes,” Eskel said, speaking up for them both. Geralt tried to shake himself back into his body, but the diaphanous texture of the world was growing stronger, almost as if reality itself was stretching before his eyes, like he could see into the spaces inbetween and pluck the strings of fate that held the world together. 

“Very well.” Didelphis said, and in the space between heartbeats she was gone, the world was solid, and Jaskier was standing in front of them, no different than the day they had left him, parting ways on the path with intent to reunite in the spring—though that hadn’t happened after all.

“Jaskier?” 

“Ah! Geralt! Eskel! It’s been a very strange winter! I’m glad to see you!” It’s been _eight hundred_ very strange winters, actually, but this hardly seemed the time to spring that on him.

He was still talking, even as Eskel rushed forward and pulled him into an embrace, words muffled as his face was pressed into Eskel’s chest by the grip he had on the back of his head. It was so painfully _Jaskier_ that Geralt had to come forward and embrace them both, overcome with the sudden rush of their lover being returned to them. How to describe the love that filled his chest? The cautious optimism, the terrible hope that this was real and permanent? 

Eskel released Jaskier from his chest, and Geralt pulled him immediately into a searing kiss, capturing lips he hadn’t tasted in centuries with his own. Jaskier still kissed the same, even eight hundred years later, and the relief of remembering was so intense that for a moment Geralt felt weightless, almost giddy. 

When he pulled back finally, it was only so Jaskier could be swept into another kiss by Eskel, a sweeter kiss that Jaskier laughed into, chamomile and bergamot and the vanilla twist of his happiness as his scent filled Geralt’s senses.

They had their bard back.

* * *

Jaskier chattered the entire way back to the town, filling them in on what had happened in his “very strange winter.” He’d been “killed” on his way to Oxenfurt, ambushed by three or four men while he was passing down a less-traveled road—sure of his demise he’d sent out one final desperate prayer before Didelphis had come to save him. 

“She said, you know, ‘You’ll be safe until you’re found,’ which seemed like rather a bit of poor dialectical reasoning to me, insomuch that well, obviously I would be safe if I was hidden, but she never specified who would find me either.” Jaskier threw his hands wide, grazing both of their shoulders where he walked between them. They’d only just gotten him back; they weren’t taking any chances. “I knew it would be you two.” 

That hurt unexpectedly, for all that it rang true. It had been them. It had just been them nearly eight hundred years too late. 

“So she just magicked you away?” Eskel asked, keeping up the conversation while Geralt was lost in thought. 

“Well, to be honest I have to just assume that, I wasn’t really paying much attention but yes, one moment I was beset on all sides by attackers most foul, and the next I was standing in a town square I’d never seen before, and a quite strange one at that, and then she sang a most glorious song and then things got fuzzy again for a while before you two came along.”

It seemed a strange tale in the retelling, though it did track with what they knew so far of Didelphis and what the busker in town had told them. 

“I’m just glad to have you back.” Geralt said, startled by the strength of his conviction. But it was true. Whatever magic had been wrought here had worked out in their favor for once. Geralt didn’t really believe in fate or destiny (though it certainly believed in him) but maybe, just this once, it was okay to let it work in his favor and not question it overmuch. Maybe just for Jaskier, he could simply take the good thing on its face. 

The last eight hundred years had been lonely without Jaskier, but now he was here. That was a gift enough for Geralt. 

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas!


End file.
